The use of medicines always comes with risks, but your individual risk may vary based on your physiology, you gender, your genetics, and your behaviour. Although much of the focus on drug use in athletes concerns performance enhancement, drug use by athletes can be associated with risks even if not a performance enhancing drug. Non…

Alternative medicines are dangerous. Complementary medicines are dangerous. The thought patterns surrounding them are dangerous; homeopathy has an association with anti-vaccine stances. Pharmacy’s engagement in homeopathy is in the main through the stocking of a side line of homeopathic products, rather than full homeopathic practice. In the UK this leads to controversies and campaigns, such as…

Is social media the answer to finding side effects? After all, there is a large cohort of individuals willing to publicly share intimate details of their lives online, including medical details. Interest in mining social media for signals of drug safety has existed for years, with advanced tools for analysis being developed. Regulators on both…

Not everybody responds to medication in the same way. Many don’t get a benefit, and some get adverse effects. As we start to understand the genetic differences between in drug response, hope exists that we can more clearly predict these outcomes from the genotype of individuals. This future is starting to arrive, but not at…

A 15 month old child has died from accidental overdose with a fentanyl patch. Fentanyl is far more potent than heroin. The dose contained in a patch is known to be deadly to children. Unusually, compared to other dosage systems, patches remain pharmacologically active after use. They can fall off, transfer to others, or be picked…

Today is the final day of the MHRA‘s contribution to a Europe wide social media campaign from the Strengthening Collaboration for Operating Pharmacovigilance in Europe (SCOPE) programme to improve the reporting of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) to schemes like the Yellow Card Scheme. Perhaps ironic, given this is occurring in the week we hear EMEA…